How Kim Kardashian and co redefined gender power politics

In a week marked by the news that 21-year-old Kylie Jenner has become the world’s youngest-ever billionaire at one end and International Women’s Day on the other, our writer explains how Kim and her sisters are disrupting outdated ideas of how women "should" behave

For years, I’ve thought of my obsession with the minutiae of the Kardashian machine as a slightly embarrassing guilty pleasure. Serious conversations about America’s most famous family have been confined to WhatsApps among a select few female friends. I refer to my expansive store of Kardashian-Jenner trivia only when I’m sure it will be viewed as an endearing eccentricity, rather than proof of vacuous idiocy. I surreptitiously watch Keeping Up With The Kardashians when my boyfriend is out and I’m free to get stuck into the highs and lows of cloistered celebrity life in Calabasas, California without falling prey to his incessant eye-rolling.

To caveat: I’m a 27-year-old feminist with a first-class English MA in postcolonial literature, culture and thought. I listen to Radio 4, read political nonfiction and would take Panorama over I’m A Celebrity... any day of the week. I’m also not blind to the family’s grotesque materialism – yes, I saw Kris Jenner’s “Rich As Fuck” Goyard suitcase – and triviality. So why, you might ask, am I endlessly fascinated by momager Kris and daughters Kourtney, Kim, Khloé, Kendall and Kylie?

For one, I like that the show is a window into the construction of celebrity, one that supplements reportage with intimate insight into the lives behind the headlines. I’m also into how the Kardashians’ story is one of unmatched female influence and power. As Dr Meredith Jones, reader in sociology at Brunel University London, who last year organised “Kimposium” – the first scholarly conference dedicated to the sisters – puts it, “We all have to negotiate the complexities of the contemporary world of fashion, grooming, communications and self-presentation and the Kardashians are the quintessential leaders of that.”

Most famous wives toe the line with their partners. Kim is publicly dissident

And yet, actually, it’s only through watching Kanye West court Donald Trump and drift out of public favour while his wife, Kim Kardashian West, becomes increasingly framed as a tech entrepreneur, the original mega-influencer and a philanthropist, that I’ve settled on why Kardashian womanhood chimes with my fourth-wave feminist values. Because beyond the billion-dollar empire, what I find compelling is the way Kim and her sisters are renegotiating how women, particularly as wives and mothers, “should” behave.

Take the Criminal Justice Reform Summit in November 2018, where Kim participated in a keynote interview with CNN’s Van Jones. She was asked about Kanye’s apparent support of Trump, given that she is resolutely anti-Trump. You’d assume that any media-trained mogul worth her salt would clap back with some deflecting BS, like a politician on The Andrew Marr Show. Instead, she told Jones that Kanye likes Trump’s personality, “but he doesn’t know about politics. So I’ve educated him.” She and the audience laughed, but actually think about how unusual it is for a woman in the public eye to disagree with her husband so openly, let alone out him for such ignorance.

Sure, famous wives sometimes criticise husbands on a small scale – Chrissy Teigen ribbing John Legend for looking like Arthur, the cartoon aardvark; Blake Lively “trolling” Ryan Reynolds about wearing a coat indoors – but when it comes to the big stuff, particularly politics, independent women evidently still feel the need to toe the line with their partners.

Hollywood wives such as Jessica Alba, Mila Kunis and Reese Witherspoon gush about the mutual “support” on which their marriages are based. There are real-talking feminist celebrity wives such as Michelle Obama who speak retrospectively of couples therapy and “bumps in the road” but ultimately always present themselves and their husbands as a united front. Even Beyoncé, who alluded to her husband having cheated on Lemonade, obviously did so not as an act of rebellion, but as part of a wider, three-album and joint-tour strategy, which Jay-Z says he was in on from the start.

All the Kardashian women are more successful than their partners. Men are mere accessories

No matter how deep inside the internet wormhole of celebrity gossip sites I go, I am yet to find another woman even half as high-profile as Kim explicitly expressing opposing views to her husband in public. But on the flip side, women readily change their views to fit more seamlessly with their husbands’. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s wife, Maria Shriver, is a case in point. Despite having been a prominent supporter of the Democrats for years, she played a crucial role in her husband’s campaign to become the governor of California when he ran – and won – as a Republican candidate. Then there are the husbands who speak out against their wives: an altogether less surprising cultural phenomenon. Think of Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway’s husband, George T Conway III, whose well-known anti-Trumpian sentiment is so strong that last year he cofounded an organisation for conservative lawyers who object to Trump’s presidency.

And Kim’s done more than just say she has different political views to her husband. She’s become an outright activist. In the same year that Kanye started to wear a Maga cap and tweeted about how Trump is his “brother”, Kim worked with Be Woke Vote, a US organisation that “encourag[ed] the nation to take a stand and vote” ahead of last year’s midterm elections. She also shared posts about unaccompanied children at the border in support of charity Kind with her 127 million Instagram followers. This is the same woman, held up as the pinnacle of the worst sort of inane, empty fame, credited with driving criminal justice reform in the US after lobbying Trump to commute the life sentence of great-grandmother Alice Johnson. And it wasn’t Kim putting her face to a cause. She fought to make it happen, from cajoling Jared Kushner and hiring lawyers, to overseeing the gathering of letters of favour and navigating Trump’s inconsistencies (the White House cancelled their initial meeting at the last minute).

Kim’s public dissidence from the Kanye school of thought feels genuine, but what’s become glaringly obvious over the past year is that she acts as PR manager for her husband. She contextualises and articulates Kanye’s views in a way he hasn’t been able to: “I think what my husband fights for – and he’s not the best communicator in explaining it – is the right to like what he wants to like, even if it’s different from what you like,” she said at the summit. What’s interesting about this interview is how well Kim came across. It sounded like loving clarification and guidance, like she was saving Kanye from himself. As Dr Jones says, “She could do damage control in all sorts of ways that would compromise herself and she doesn’t; she’s being incredibly strong, subtle and sophisticated in her handling of Kanye’s oscillating political views.” It seems that’s how Kanye sees it too: he retweeted a clip himself.

She’s learned from example: Kim’s mother, Kris, the real brains behind the Kardashian behemoth, held opposing political views to her husband – Kim’s stepfather – Caitlyn (formerly Bruce), a Republican. During their marriage, Kris also delegated domestic duties such as childcare to Bruce, while she controlled the finances. There’s a scene in series four in which, like a housewife, Bruce actually asks Kris for his own bank account, saying he hates having to ask for coffee money. He didn’t get one.

All the Kardashian women are more financially successful than their partners. We’re well-versed on the pay gap in most industries, but this is a particularly remarkable feat given that, according to Forbes, only 15 of the 100 highest-earning celebrities are women. You see, regardless of their own careers, the men in the Kardashian-Jenners’ orbit end up as accessories. There’s the quiet, puppy-like loyalty of Kris’ 25-years-her-junior boyfriend, Corey; Tristan Thompson, a basketball player who only became a household name once he starting dating Khloé. Kylie is worth at least 40 times more than boyfriend Travis Scott. Even Kanye’s fame is eclipsed by Kim’s influence and he knows it. Kim announced his Yandhi drop, curated the season seven lookbook for Yeezy and let’s not forget when she tweeted about apparently bailing Kanye out of $53m debt.

The Kardashians’ insistence on behaving however they please, no matter whether cultural conventions condone it or not, is empowering

As any KUWTK viewer will tell you, Kim comes across as a doting, highly capable mother. Yet much of the criticism she receives relies on an outdated perception of how a good mother or wife should behave. When Kim posted that famous naked selfie back in 2016, Piers Morgan claimed his issue with her nudity related to the fact she was “a mother of two very young children”. An October 2018 Instagram photo of Kim in a tiny Chanel bikini attracted comments ranging from “you have kids” to “a respectable man would never allow his wife to do this”. (Side note: Kim has said that Kanye is sometimes “bothered” or “upset” by such photographs.)

But still she posts, putting a middle finger up (remember that topless selfie of Kim and Emily Ratajkowski?) to the notion that a woman’s body should be policed by others, that her life is over once she gets married or has children, that she’s no longer desirable or allowed to be and that she should be defined by those roles. It’s heartening to see Kim continue to engage in behaviour that Kanye doesn’t like, to refuse to let his feelings take precedence over her own. He might have helped with her high-fashion makeover, but she won’t let him dictate her income-driving image: “[I told Kanye that] it’s my Instagram,” Kim once said to Khloé. “You’re not going to tell me what to post. That’s the one thing. No one will tell me what to post.” Sharing naked selfies might not be my style, but the Kardashians’ insistence on behaving however they please, no matter whether cultural conventions – or even their husbands – condone it or not, is empowering.

We are living through strange times. Looked at one way, society has never been so inclusive. Look again, however, and you see Trump, the rise of the alt-right, the threat to women’s reproductive rights, toxic masculinity and male suicide rates. Kim and her family, with their tales of trans-identity, co-parenting, surrogacy and strong, flawed women, are on the right side of the push for progress. By challenging gender norms, these women – who, with 540m Instagram followers between them, are the single most powerful force in pop culture – are showing a new generation how to question conventions, embrace more multifarious ways of being, be true to yourself and accept others as they are. They may be rich and beautiful, but the Kardashians are not perfect, princess-like paragons of virtue. For all the fillers and filters, when I watch the show I see a family who champions the messiness of real life over Hollywood happily-ever-afters. To quote Kim, “Maybe my fairy tale has a different ending than I dreamed it would. But that’s OK.”